Fuel cell technology has developed rapidly over the last decade, and is today in use for numerous applications. One example is where micro fuel cells are used in small portable charger systems for the production of electricity for electronic equipment such as mobile phones, computers and the like.
Common fuels for such systems are e.g. methanol and hydrogen. In the latter case the hydrogen is normally produced from hydrides which react with water to produce hydrogen gas that is passed to the fuel cells for conversion to electricity.
Examples of such systems are disclosed in a number of patents and patent applications, e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 8,632,928 (Signa) which uses hydrogen, and EP 1 747 588 B1 (BIC) which uses methanol as fuel.
Hydrogen is most commonly generated by a reaction between a hydride and water although there are systems employing a reaction between Al and alkali, e.g. as disclosed in ES-2,321,793 (Soler et al), U.S. Pat. No. 7,074,509 (Rosenfeld et al), and U.S. Pat. No. 8,071,242 (Rosenfeld et al).